2018 UW High School Honors Jazz Band:

The jazz program at UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music invites high school students from the greater Madison region to audition for the 6th Annual UW Honors Jazz Band. The UW Honors Jazz Band is a big band for Madison-area high school students looking for an additional opportunity to perform advanced jazz repertoire together with like-minded peers. Participating students will work with UW jazz faculty, including Director of Jazz Studies Johannes Wallmann, trumpeter Marquis Hill, and students from the UW Jazz Orchestra over the course of four rehearsals in two weeks to prepare for a final concert on April 27, 2018 at UW Madison’s Music Hall.

Application Deadline:

Sunday, February 18, 2018 (late applications will be accepted as space permits)

Application Procedure:

Please see the Auditions page to apply and for more information regarding auditions.

Joint concert with the UW High School Honors Jazz Band and the UW Jazz Orchestra @ UW Music Hall

Cost:

$60 for participants (there is no fee to apply/audition)

Featured guest trumpeter Marquis Hill:

Born and raised in Chicago, trumpeter Marquis Hill released four well-received discs on Skiptone Music – New Gospel (2011), Sound of the City (2012), The Poet (2013) and Modern Flows, vol. 1 (2014) and won the the 2012 International Trumpet Guild Jazz Improvisation Competition and the 2013 Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition before moving to New York City in 2014 and winning the 2014 Thelonious Trumpet Competition, which awarded him $25,000 and a recording contract with Concord Records. His Concord Records debut, The Way We Play features Hill leading his Blacktet (altoist Christopher McBride, vibraphonist Justin Thomas, bassist Joshua Ramos, drummer Makaya McCraven) on classics like Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage” and Monk’s “Straight No Chaser” have been joined by less known things like Carmell Jones’ “Beep Durple” and Donald Byrd’s “Fly Little Bird Fly." The New York Times described him as a “dauntingly skilled trumpeter,” and the Chicago Tribune asserts that “his music crystallizes the hard-hitting, hard-swinging spirit of Chicago jazz.”

Hill graduated from the Northern Illinois University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education and then earned a masters degree in jazz pedagogy at DePaul University. Hill also participated in the Ravinia Jazz Scholars, which afforded him the opportunity to learn under such established jazz artists as guitarist Bobby Broom, pianist Willie Pickens, and trumpeter Tito Carrillo. While still an undergraduate, Hill became one of Chicago’s most in-demand jazz trumpeters; he made noteworthy club dates with a host of the Chi-Town’s finest including saxophonists Von Freeman and Fred Anderson. He has taught at the University of Illinois in Chicago, Harold Washington College, the Birch Creek Music Performance Center in Egg Harbor, Wis., and the NIU Summer Jazz Camp.

"Marquis Hill, not yet 30 and based in both his hometown of Chicago and in New York, is one of the most promising jazz musicians to gain a national reputation in recent memory. He’s a remarkably gifted trumpeter, with a technical command that can evoke heroes like Donald Byrd and Freddie Hubbard without getting too close to the source, and a composer-bandleader whose music and working group, the Blacktet, boast a comprehensive vision." - Evan Haga, JazzTimes Magazine, Oct 2016